A Long Fall From A Very High Place
by xXRefractionXx
Summary: Experiment Number 235 has been subject to the School's torture her entire life. So when Jeb Batchelder breaks her out, he seems like an angel from heaven. But when he brings her to the flock, she struggles to fit in. Lots of Fax! DylanxOC (sorry, terrible summary)
1. Chapter 1

Experiment Number 235 was hauled out of her cage by two overlarge Erasers. These were the new variety. The metallic kind. Just under their skin was metal. 235 hated them. They looked human, but definitely weren't. They were much stronger and solider than 235 was, even with all her enhanced genes. And the worst part was, she couldn't hide from them.

You see, 235 was a 'mutant'. After hundreds of avian mutants went rogue, she was one of their last shots. They attempted to treat her with care to make her like them. They treated each mutant the same. Cage, terrible experiments, starved, dehydrated. All to see how they would hold up.

235, like the rest of the mutants in the 200's category, had been injected with 2% avian DNA and 1% some other animal. In her case, it was chameleon.

The 200-210's were the "freaks" as the scientists had dubbed them. They had added the DNAs at the wrong stages in their life and had produced twisted, inhuman creatures. They might have a beak sticking out of their half-feathered back. And so forth. 211-220 were much better, although there was the occasional wrong body part.

221-230 were almost perfect. And 231-240 were the best.

235 hated it all.

The Erasers dragged her unceremoniously into a white room with a silver lab table on it. Oh no.

She attempted to camouflage into the wall, but the scientists were ready for her. They seized her arms and dragged her onto the table while she screamed and lashed out.

"Usual defense mechanism," the head Doctor said, poking her. She couldn't help it, she turned a silver-gray, the same shade as the lab table. "Aha, little mutant. Disgusting creatures, really," he added to his underdogs. His lip curled, and 235 couldn't hate him more.

"Now, for the adrenalines," he said. Four large shots filled with the same shade of fluids were handed to him and stuck into 235's body.

Her brain and heart went into overdrive, and her skin shifted colors. Purple, green, yellow stripes, grass, sky, sunset orange, and finally settled on a flashing red.

She barely noticed when they added more, different shots. Slowly, she began to calm down until her fingers went numb and she felt dizzy. Her skin shaded to a dull gray.

Her entire body was numb, but strangely it didn't cause her any panic. Instead, she felt as if she were floating atop a cloud. 235 giggled. "Wheee!" she said aloud. "Oh boy! Oh boy!" she repeated over and over again.

Slowly, she sank down from her cloud. She suddenly felt more hungry than ever, with a choking thirst.

"We've extracted all foods and liquids that we can from her system without killing her," the Head said, so casually like he was naming the color of the sky. He inspected his gloves, which were tinged pink. He expertly stripped them off and held his hand out arrogantly, as if waiting for a grand prize.

A doctor passed the gloves down to him, and he pulled them on.

Suddenly, 235 felt a sharp pain in her abdomen. Looking down, she saw a row of stitches, which were currently being ripped open by a younger doctor.

She screamed and convulsed violently, vomiting up acids. The doctor jumped back nervously, but reinforcements had already come, sticking needles into her arms.

The world faded to black, only affected by the agony in her torso.

She awoke back in her cage. The sticker she'd read over and over again was still on her ceiling. A picture of a large, fluffy dog rolling around in green grass. For Large Dogs, 60lbs+

What 235 would give to be that dog, rolling around happily in the grass. She hoped said dog would at least have a pad in the crate instead of hard flooring.

"Hey, you back?" 240 said from her right. Arrogant fool. "How'd it go?"

"Horrible, what do you expect?" she snarled.

"Oh. Well, I've never had to be experimented on. I was perfect already." he puffed proudly.

"Clearly personality doesn't fit under perfect," 235 quipped. "Now shut your mouth please, I'm trying to rest." Which was a lie, but anything to get him to stop talking.

She turned around and looked at the plastic wall of her cage. Twelve score marks, one for each year she'd been here. Much smaller marks decorated the sides and lid of her cage, 365 of each. Well, and the occasional 366 (for a leap year).

In two days she'd scratch the thirteenth score mark. She sighed. Thirteen years of a miserable life.

The first four years of scratch marks had been done by an older girl who had been able to teleport. Not through metal, though, so she had always come through the side. The Doctors caught on to this trick rather quickly after they noticed her missing multiple times, and quickly reinforced her cage with metal. 235 had been left to do her own scratch marks after that.

She used a small, now dull, piece of metal that had been dislodged after a particularly brutal fight with an Eraser when she was a year old. Just a baby, but the Eraser had tried to rip her out of the cage. She had spread her small wings and gotten them stuck, and the Eraser couldn't pull her out, so instead he tore open the wire and crawled in after her.

The thing about her mutations is they made her memory extremely sharp. She rarely misunderstood or forgot something unless drugged.

So when she began to fall asleep that night, she would remember the tapping sound from the wall.

When she awoke, pandemonium ensued. She rubbed her blurry eyes. Flashing alarms shone red lights into her eyes. Cage doors were sprung open by a man in a black mask. He flew down the row of cages like a tiger.

The first thing she noticed was the way her sight was still blurry around the edges. The alarms were a more orange color than they should've been. Her chameleon DNA made her highly sensitive to color. 240 on her right hadn't said a word. When the man came to spring her cage open, she just sat there. "This is all fake," she said, rolling her eyes. The School often tested her on what she would do in this situation. Each time, the Head Doctor played the man in the black mask like a videogame avatar. "The lighting color is off. 240 isn't saying anything, which is unusual because he's a big-mouthed brat. My vision's blurry, and I don't need glasses, I know that."

Abruptly, the colors disappeared into a blinding white light. She sighed. "White," she said aloud. The color shifted slightly, but returned to the original white. "White again, I'm not stupid." The colors changed, ranging from the visible spectrum to the 'invisible' spectrum. They were testing her ability to see different colors. As always, she could name every one. At last the color changed to magenta (an easy one) and then faded to black.

They ran her through plenty of simulations that she knew were fake, and then finally she woke up for real in her cage. 240 was sitting up, eating toast with jam. Since he was such a good boy. In front of her were two pills and a cup of flat sparkling water. Leftovers. She got these nutrient pills every morning for 'breakfast'. They didn't bother changing them because they knew she'd be able to detect the (however subtle) change in color.

She downed the pills and sighed in envy, eyeing the toast. The one time she'd had real food was when she'd stolen it from 240's cage when he was out stretching his legs. She'd gotten into trouble for that, but the food was delicious.

Today she had chosen to see in the normal human spectrum. She disliked it any other way, it gave her headaches from seeing all too much at once. She could sustain thermal vision for four hours without getting a migraine, and night vision for eight.

Jeb Batchelder banged the door open. 235 knew he wasn't trusted by the School. So what was he doing here? He put his hands on his knees, panting, scanning the cages. He sprinted the short distance to the cages, locked the door behind him, and began to read the tags. They read the subject's number, DNA type, age and abilities. Although some were outdated. 235's read that she was 11, although she was close to 13. They didn't update the signs often.

At 232's cage, he stopped, removed a keyring from his pocket, and unlocked the cage. 232 sprung out and hissed loudly. Cat hybrid. The cat/bird had tried to eat itself. The next cage he sprung was 234. Screeching, the monkey hybrid sprung out.

"235, Avian/Chameleon, 11, camouflage, flying," he muttered under his breath hurriedly. He grabbed the keyring again and unlocked her cage. She sprung out and blended into the wall. He sighed. After hurrying down the rest of the cages, he unlocked the door. "Run," he instructed. "Jump out the window and go."

The cat hybrid began to speak. "Yes, I know you can't fly. Come with me."

235 exploded down the hallway at a run, still invisible. Doctors looked confused as she accidentally jostled one or two. Right, left, right. The alarms began to blare as she took her last strides, turning into a human torpedo as she launched herself through the window feetfirst. The thin wire netting bent and snapped and the glass shattered. She turned sideways and just made it through the bars before spreading her wings out far above the school.

She remembered the electric fence. According to her positioning, it was about two feet in front of her. Barbed wire rose up behind it. Shooting up to the sky so she could pass the 200-foot fence, she debated her options. If she hit the electric fence (positioned like a huge dome around the building) her collar would turn on and electrocute her. And there was no way to get the collar off. It had no opening. They had put it over her head when she was very small. It had been loose then. Now it was tight and had almost suffocated her in her sleep.

The only option was so go as fast as she could, so the momentum would carry her over the fence if she did fall.

She heard a screech from below her as the monkey hybrid hit the fence and tumbled down, hitting the ground. A few seconds later, the doctors rushed out and carried the boy back into the building. They had no idea where 235 was. The tracker was in her collar, but it went haywire this close to the fence. They knew she was still on the property.

Gathering courage, she backed up over the rooftop, flapping her wings. Adjusting her camouflage, she shot forward into oblivion.

A searing pain hit her neck as soon as she thought she'd gotten through. She let out a scream and the doctors carrying the boy inside looked up, dropped him, and rushed inside. She realized her camouflage had dropped and was in too much pain to put it back. A man grunted on the rooftop behind her and she felt a swish of air by her bare foot.

Thankfully, there was a warm air current right at the edge of the building, helping her to glide along.

She soared over the fence and out into the parking lot behind it. She needed to get out of here, and faster. Doctors just arriving for work looked up and pointed, and ran for their guns.

235 was quickly running out of energy and breath. Everything became a series of processed frames.

She cleared the parking lot.

A bullet skimmed her leg.

She flapped weakly toward a large redwood forest.

She slowly sank down.

Her wing clipped a tree.

She went spiraling out of control.

And everything went black.

 **A/N: hope you enjoyed! ;) I wrote this on google docs so the formatting might be weird.**


	2. Chapter 2

235 woke up battered and bruised, with her hospital gown ripped to shreds. Her leg was soaked in blood. She tore of one of the shreds and rubbed away the blood, revealing a long, shallow cut down the back of her calf.

Jeb appeared out of the trees. "You're the only survivor," he said, politely averting his eyes. "I saw the monkey go down. The cat ran off and got attacked by Erasers. I claimed I was trying to get her back and 'went to go see how far you were'."

"Whole lot of good you did me," 235 snapped. "I'm practically dying here!"

Jeb sighed and tugged an Ace bandage out of his pack. He wrapped it around her calf neatly, securing the Velcro end. "There," he said. "Max will know how to deal with it better."

"Max?" 235 said curiously.

"Maximum Ride? Surely you've heard of my daughter?"

Maximum Ride was a _legend_ at the School. No one knew when or how she and her friends escaped, but somehow they did. Some claimed she was probably sitting out there as a granny with iced tea in hand. Other claimed they knew the "little tot" when she had still been at the School.

"Sure," 235 said, playing it cool. Surely she wasn't about to meet Max?

"A few months ago, she wanted to rescue mutants from the school. I told her she shouldn't go. Of course she didn't listen." He looked regretful for a moment. "She got captured and studied, but managed to escape. I told her I'd rescue someone." Pride lit his gaze, for himself and his daughter.

"Anyway, if you can remember where she lives you can fly there," he assured 235. He handed her a slip of paper with an address on it. "Go to this house, and then fly up the mountain behind it."

The address was a long way away, but 235 nodded and took off.

After two hours of flying, her wings burned. It had taken her forever to get the hang of it. The first half hour, she had been careening around, skimming rooftops. Good thing 235 was camouflaged! Now, she was high up. But feeling the need to rest, the avian paused on a tall building, gasping. She let her wings drape to either side of her and tipped her head back.

The girl woke up about an hour later. The sun was directly overhead and her wings ached. But she stood, adjusted her disguise, and took off again. It was a particularly sunny day, so people would look up, expecting a plane(a large silver thing with wings that she had only heard about) or something after seeing her shadow, and be rather confused.

She flew four more hours and was an hour away from her destination when she heard such strange things, she almost plummeted to the ground. Other's thoughts. In her head.

As she flew further, the thoughts changed and shifted depending on where she was in the country.

Finally she was at the address. It was an empty house. She sagged in disappointment, but then remembered-Jeb had told her she needed to fly up the mountain behind it.

Sighing, she flapped her wings and took off again. As she flew, she flew above a still pond, reflecting the sky and herself. This was perhaps the first time she had seen herself. She had dark brown hair, and high, angular cheekbones. Her eyes were an icy, piercing blue, standing out from her thin frame.

At last she came upon a large house on an outcropping. A porch stuck out from the doorway with two lawn chairs, one with an abandoned magazine and a glass of lemonade.

235 crashed to a halt in front of the doorway, becoming a melty pile of limbs. After a few minutes, she drew herself up and knocked.

Two seconds later a stunning girl with coffee-colored skin, long dark curly hair, and wings opened the door. She held a book titled Fashion Advice in hand and wasn't paying attention.

"Yes, sorry, we're not taking deliveries today, I just told you that an hour ago, you can-" She looked up, noticing the battered girl. "Who are _you?_ "

"Um," 235 said, shuffling her feet. "Uh, Jeb sent me?"

Nudge rolled her eyes. "Jeb! He did tell us he was delivering us something today. I'm Monique, but you should call me Nudge, really. Welcome to the Ride household, what can we do for you? I suppose we can't really _do_ anything for you, just take you in and stuff, although you clearly could use a little cleaning up. Max! Fang! Gazzy! Angel! Iggy!"

Footsteps echoed from behind Nudge, and five people appeared behind her. Nudge quickly explained to them that she was the delivery, and she was ushered into the house.

They sat down on a large orange sofa. Max stared at her, making her shift uncomfortably and cross her arms over her chest.

"So," Max said. "Who are you and what are you doing here?"

"Umm," 235 mumbled. "I'm 235, and Jeb broke me free from the School and told me to come here."

Max nodded. "Well, welcome to your new home."

"She can read minds too," A small blonde girl blurted. "My name's Angel," she added.

235 nodded. "I can also camoflauge, like this," she said, fading away into the sofa underneath her.

"Whoa!" The younger boy said. "Man, you'd be crazy good for spy work!" He opened his mouth to add something else, but was silenced by a look from Max.

Nudge introduced everyone. "Well, uh, 235," she said. "You're going to need a better name than a number. How about, um, Lulu? No? Adrienne? Bertha, no definitely not. Gigi? Whitney? Laurel?" The rest of the flock were rolling their eyes.

"Let her decide," Dylan said, appearing from the kitchen.

"Um," 235 said. "Tess?" Nudge shook her head violently. Tess was the only name she knew, because it was her mother's name.

"Harper? Amelia?" Nudge said. Her eyes lit up. " _Madison!_ "

"Maddie for short," Angel threw in.

Madison nodded. "I think I'll just go with Madison for now. Thanks, Nudge!"

Nudge nodded, pleased. "But, uh, I think you're going to need to shower first."

* * *

 **A/N: Well? What did you think? Hate it? Love it?**

 **Two chapters from now, I'm opening up a SYOC. More flock members! :D**


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